Noob advice appreciated!

[cgp]

A while back my kids got me a 3 gallon Eclipse system 3 that I have set up for my office with plants and FW fish.

 

It got me to thinking, which is a bad thing.

 

I'm thinking of buying another one and upgrading the light from a 6 watt to a 13 watt from here: www.ahsupply.com. It looks like the lighting should fit right into the slot where the 6 watt lighting sits.

 

It'll give me 4.3 watts per gallon.

 

It has a built in marineland biowheel filter with a turnover rating of 45 gallons, so filtration should be fine.

 

Toss in a little heater, a bit of live sand, some small chunks of live rock and I've got a start.

 

I have some reef experience via a 55 gal that I ran with a plenum and protein skimmer, I had it very well balanced so I really did have minimal maintenance on the thing. OK. Here are my questions:

 

1. How does the above set-up look for a start?

 

2. How much maintenance are we talking here to keep it looking good and in balance?

 

3. Should I even bother thinking about a plenum? I'm thinking no and that it would be kinda silly for something so small, but it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.

 

4. How should I stock it? I'm thinking along the following lines:

 

3 hermits

2 snails

1 goby or clown

mushrooms

leathers

star polyps

cleaner shrimp

 

Am I a total nutjob, or is it doable?

Any and all comments would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[ajroahkni]

Sounds good to me, though you should probably take out the biowheel but use the unit for flow. Your LR should be adequate in handling the biowheel's responsibilities.

 

Also, I think your greatest problem will be evaporation issues. Consider getting an automated top-off system for the tank. I believe physh1 makes them.

 

John

[Korbin]

Evaporation isnt a big problem with the elcipse hood. As long as you don't modify it too bad.

 

everything looks good, except for the clown: pitch it. Probably even the goby. Shrimp should be ok though. I suggest doing a search for 3 gallon and eclipse and all that good stuff on here and in the nano-reef section of ReefCentral. Theres lotsa info out there.

 

Dont worry about a plenum or nuthin. Whatever that is. I ran mine for 9 months without even using the filter and had 0 problems. (except when a snail died)

 

Oh yeah, I suggest banded trochus snails, as they seem hardier than astreas. If one dies, you're up a creek.

[cgp]

I just did a search on this site using eclipse and noticed that some people love em and some people hate em. It also looks like most of you think that 6 gals will work much better than 3, esp. if I want to keep a fish in there. Yes? No?

[NaNO ReeFiN]

If you want to keep a clown or some other kind of small fish, I'd highly recommend going with a larger tank.